514 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



idea of what is to be seen, because it is not to be seen, 

 so I have retired to a "shady spot," for at this, 12 o'clock, 

 the sun pours down in such fervor as only is to be felt 

 after a frosty morning, and at a table provided for the 

 accommodation of "we gentlemen of the press." I finish 

 this letter thus far, for no farther can I go, and you must 

 take the will for the deed, unless indeed I may hereafter 

 find elbow room enough to give you another epistle from 

 your old friend. 



Solon Robinson. 



New York State Agricultural Show at Utica — 

 Continued 



[Daily Cincinnati Gazette, Oct. 1, 1845] 



Utica, N. Y. Sept. 18th, 1845. 

 Messrs. Editors. — This is the third and last day of 

 the great fair. We have had two beautiful days, the first 

 rather cool, but clear and bracing with a frosty night, 

 followed by a most lovely, clear and rather too warm a 

 day yesterday ; while the promise this morning is a little 

 in favor of rain. When you understand that this Fair 

 is held in the center of a county containing a population 

 of 90,000, with a railroad and canal running through, 

 which poured in its tens of thousand more, as I noted 

 yesterday, you will not be surprised that there were 

 40,000 to visit and help make up the "great show" — and 

 I speak advisedly, when I say that I never saw a finer 

 collection of the human family together. The mass was 

 made up of the families of the actual cultivators of the 

 soil, and their wives and children, and men servants and 

 maid servants, all neat and comfortably clad, and I must 

 say in most cases, displaying a little too much of the 

 products of foreign workshops, and too little of the real 

 homespun of our own homes. But one thing I remarked, 

 there was a very small percent, of the genuine loafer 

 variety, and only just enough of the aristocracy, (for we 

 have an aristocracy in this country, notwithstanding our 



